The present invention relates to a method and a device for controlling operating sequences in a vehicle using at least one control unit having at least one non-volatile memory element, control being performed as a function of the respective vehicle version and/or control unit version.
German Published Patent Application No. 38 02 241 describes an electronic controller for motor vehicles having a central unit, a program memory, a data memory, and an input/output unit having a plurality of input and output channels. The basic equipment can be laid out for a plurality of different individual design versions at the same time. A code memory for at least one code word for determining the respective individual design version is assigned to this basic version. At the time of installation in the vehicle or at a later time, the code word specific to the vehicle equipment version is input in the code memory to activate or enable the appropriate special controller version. The respective program sections, data records, input and/or output channels can be activated as a function of the content of the code memory. The controller version corresponding to the respective vehicle type is permanently defined by inputting the code word and by the code memory. If a modification is made at a later time, for example, by installing an additional component, this new component can be taken into account through a new code word if provision exists for doing so. However, the first version is then defined for the current operation of the vehicle. Thus, a code word is assigned to each version, the versions being defined and their number no longer being subject to changes.
The same holds true for German Published Patent Application No. 35 43 966, where a multicomputer system having at least one user-programmable memory is proposed, the programmable memory being connected to a first computer via a data bus. The other computers only have access to read-only memories in which different versions of data records are stored. Depending on the application, one or more defined data records can be selected for program processing via appropriate identifiers, which are stored in the user-programmable memory. This allows easy adaptation to certain applications without special multicomputer systems having to be provided for each application. However, even in this case the type and number of versions is fixed according to the data record defined.
Thus it can be seen that the related art cannot provide optimum results in all respects. Therefore the object of the present invention is to provide a flexible implementation of versions that is optimized for processing time and memory usage with respect to the external and internal requirements.
The present invention is based on methods for controlling operating sequences in a vehicle using at least one control unit having at least one non-volatile memory element, control being performed as a function of the respective vehicle version and/or control unit version, and the respective functions are selected during function selection by defining an identifier according to the version used, at least one predefinable data record and/or program code in the memory element corresponding to the selected functions. The data record and/or program code is selected from a plurality of data records and/or program codes.
In the method according to the present invention, the plurality of data records and/or program codes is advantageously generated during a version selection, and the identifier contains configuration parameters which are used for determining the data record and/or the program code, the respective identifier, i.e., the configuration parameters being used for the selection of the version and the selection of the function.
By using the same identifiers, i.e. switch elements, in configuring the software, in the application and function selection just before leaving the factory, the version handling can be implemented flexibly in a manner that is optimized for memory usage and processing time with respect to a variety of requirements. Thus the selection of versions itself, in particular of the required application data, can be influenced even after the characteristics have been determined.
Thus different vehicle models, equipment versions of vehicles and engines of a vehicle model can be advantageously operated with different data records but with a single software code. Thus the software developer can develop and service a single program code. A certain number of data records is advantageously generated in the application as determined by the switch elements.